1/2/2020

Introduction

Introduction

  • Voiceless retroflex fricative [ʂ]

  • Voiceless alveolar fricative [s]

  • Free variation or not?

Methodology

Methodology

  • Participants

  • Stimuli

  • Procedures

Participants

  • 40 persons

  • Studying in National Taiwan University

  • From different departments

Stimuli

  • Necessary cues for discrimination between /ʃa/ and /sa/ in English. (Li ＆ Allen 2011)

    • /ʃa/ 2-4kHz
    • /sa/ 4-8kHz

  • Naturally produced [ʂa]

Stimuli

Stimuli

  • Praat

  • Hann band-pass filter

  • One second long

Stimuli

Procedures

Procedures

  • Psychopy

  • Correspondent keys of the Mandarin Phonetic Symbols on the keyboard (i.e.,ㄕandㄙ)

  • Pretest

  • Experiment

Pretest

  • 6 stimuli

  • 3 of 1500Hz, 3 of 5000Hz

  • To observe whether they would agree with the two extremes of the [ʂa-sa] continuum.

Experiment

  • 36 steps of a [ʂa-sa] continuum from 1500Hz to 5000Hz

  • Identify which sound they thought they heard upon the presentation of the stimuli.

Result and Analysis

Result and Analysis

  • Pretest

  • Identification Task

  • Reaction Time

Pretest

Identification Task

Identification Task

Least Squared Estimation

Least Squared Estimation

  • Y = 0.00035 X - 0.75769

  • Y = -0.00035 X + 1.75769

    • X = 3593.4Hz

    • approximates to the averaged figures 3538Hz from Svantesson (1986).

Reaction Time

Reaction Time

Simple Moving Average

Reaction Time

Conclusion

Conclusion

  • The categorical perception between [ʂ] and [s] still exists in Taiwan Mandarin.

  • the mean boundary point frequency 3593.4Hz

  • One eighth of subjects don’t distinguish the two phonemes.

    • /ʂ-s/ merger is ongoing and is likely to be totally merged in the future.

Reference

Boersma, Paul & Weenink, David (2019). Praat: doing phonetics by computer [Computer program]. Version 6.0.55, retrieved 13 June 2019 from http://www.praat.org/

Chang, C. B., Haynes, E. F., Yao, Y., & Rhodes, R. (2009). A tale of five fricatives: Consonantal contrast in heritage speakers of Mandarin. University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics, 15(1), 37-43.

Chung, K. S. (2006). Hypercorrection in Taiwan Mandarin. Journal of Asian Pacific Communication, 16(2), 197-214.

Chang, Y. H. S. (2017). The Influence of Dialect Information on the Perception of the Mandarin Alveolar-Retroflex Contrast. Concentric: Studies in Linguistics, 43(1), 1-23.

Chang, Y., Shih, C., & Allen, J. B. (2013). Variability in cross-dialect perception of the Mandarin alveolar-retroflex contrast. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Phonetics of the Languages in China (pp. 115-118).

Li, F., & Allen, J. B. (2010). Manipulation of consonants in natural speech. IEEE Transactions on Audio, Speech, and Language Processing, 19(3), 496-504.

Peirce, J. W., Gray, J. R., Simpson, S., MacAskill, M. R., Höchenberger, R., Sogo, H., Kastman, E., Lindeløv, J. (2019). PsychoPy2: experiments in behavior made easy. Behavior Research Methods. 10.3758/s13428-018-01193-y

Svantesson, J. O. (1986). Acoustic analysis of Chinese fricatives and affricates. Journal ISSN, 280, 526X.

Thank you!